My stepdaughter wants to go to California to see her girlfriendYou don't know people any more in person than online? Really? A 14 year old traveling a great distance to meet someone they've only known online (and thus, don't truly know isn't a 47 year old man pretending to be a 14 year old girl) is a totally different situation than traveling to visit somebody that they knew/dated for some time. If it's the former neighbor, a schoolmate, etc., somebody the parents have met (but has since moved far away), I think you can have confidence that you "know" them in a way that is entirely different than some random cross-country chatroom acquaintance.

How to stop my father from physically abusing meMost 15 year olds are not in the same physical league as a grown adult male, particularly one who has shown he is willing and able to inflict violence on a family member. (He probably would already have stopped if the kid were physically imposing.) It's at least as likely that this will be an escalation in the severity of household violence, or result in being thrown out of the house, or worse.

Is it fair (or adequate) to ask a 4 yr old to stop crying for some reason?It seems to me that the answer has a lot to do with the reason for the crying. Injured? Tired? Emotionally upset by something that is legitimately distressing? Something trivial that she needs to learn to talk about or accept without a meltdown? Or has she learned that she will be showered with attention and sympathy for as long as she cries? I would never tell a kid who just skinned her knee to stop crying, but I certainly would say that to a kid who's throwing a tantrum because they saw a toy that you aren't willing to buy.

Is there an age before which you should avoid the concept of death or dying?It seems to me that it would be remarkable and rare to make it to 9 or 10 without a single close relative, friend, or pet dying by that point. I wouldn't want a close tragic event to be the very first time we discussed these issues, gotten a handle on the concepts, and had the emotional tools to deal with it.

When is it safe for a child to start boxing against a bag?Just running through the math... 2500 injuries, 19 years, 1/3 hand injuries (I'm assuming that the majority of non-hand injuries were of people getting hit, not hitting)... that's only about 50 ER-worthy hand injuries per year, nationwide. And, though I have no data, I'd hazard a guess that the majority of those were actually boxing, not hitting a bag. I'm not sure I'd classify that as especially high risk, and personally would err on the side of letting my kid do it (casually, not to excess, and after being shown how to do so safely, with an appropriately weighted bag).